


Snapshots

by o0katiekins0o



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-09
Updated: 2016-07-15
Packaged: 2018-05-25 17:06:53
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6203707
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/o0katiekins0o/pseuds/o0katiekins0o
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One-shot drabbles originally posted to tumblr now find a home here.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Murder Giggles

“While I appreciate you’re creativity, Molly. How would you get the victim’s penis up his own bum once you’ve cut it off from the necessary blood supply?”

“Dry ice.” She answers so quickly it makes him do a double take.

“Oh. OH! That is brilliant… But I am slightly disturbed at how much thought you’ve given this particular detail.” 

“Don’t be. It’s just an improvement on the ‘meat dagger’ idea.” She smiled, glancing over at him from the autopsy table.

Sherlock threw his head back and laughed but, as his laughter began to taper off, he paused as if he had a thought and then laughed even harder.

“What?” Molly was giggling despite herself watching Sherlock overcome in a fit of hysterical laughter. My God there were even tears! 

When he was finally able to catch his breath, he swiped at the corners of his eyes. “I’m just appreciating how appropriate the term 'inside joke’ is right now.”, a few leftover giggles escaping him.

Molly groaned, but couldn’t help herself from laughing anyway.


	2. BrOTP

“Hmm” John intoned, flitting over the corpse laid out in the gravel. “There’s something in the mouth”, the doctor took out a pen light, carefully pushing the jaws open to look inside. 

John fought the urge to gag as his gloved fingers pulled out a deceptively long strand of slimey green… something from the victim’s mouth. “Guh, what is this?!”

“It appears to be some form of kelp or algae. Won’t know for certain until we get it back to the lab. Bag it.” Sherlock ordered distantly.   


“I will do just as soon as you give me an evidence bag.” John held out his hand in expectation of receiving the aforementioned bag. Sherlock gave a look of surprise as he patted the outside of his pockets.   


“I er… don’t have them.” He answered in seeming disbelief.   


“You don’t have them? How could you not have them?” John batted back, even more disbelieving.   


“I was in a hurry, I must have forgotten them.” Sherlock’s voice was an irritated growl.

John was perplexed, he’d seen his best friend this annoyed many times but it, was rather unusual for him to remain so while at a crime scene. “Why were you in a hurry? You weren’t even doing anything. You said you were just tinkering around in the kitchen with Molly.”  


“People forget things, John. The entropic nature of the universe dictates that, on occasion, even Sherlock Holmes can forget something, alright!?”   


“Yeah, alright. I still need something to put this- guh… goop in. Have you got anything? Anything at all?” John was shuddering at the prospect of being told to hold it in his hand all the way back to the lab.   


That’s the moment Sherlock did the unthinkable. He cut his eyes to each side making sure there was no one else about, reached inside his coat pocket and held out an all-too familiar foil square. 

John gaped for a moment, blinking slowly. Sherlock could practically hear the neurons firing like an old jalopy inside his friend’s brain as he put it all together. “I’m very flattered.” John began, “But I’m a happily married man.” He said through his hearty chuckles. 

“Ha. Ha. Do you want the damn thing or not? You’re more than welcome to hold your proverbial load all the way to Barts.” Sherlock fired back.   


“Ugh, phrasing, Sherlock.” John said before snatching the johnny with his free hand, ripping the packet open with his teeth, shaking it into unraveling and gently guiding the mystery anaerobic plant life into the latex tube. 

He tied it off expertly, handing it off to the detective who was avoiding the good doctor’s gaze like a call from Mycroft. Still he took the prophylactic-turned-evidence bag and dropped it into the cavernous recesses of his coat pocket.   


John rose from the ground, brushing the dirt off of his knees. “So…” He looked up at Sherlock. “Molly?”

Sherlock cleared his throat, giving only the slightest of nods in affirmation before glancing briefly to see his best mate’s reaction to the news.

Anger, doubt, and/or a fevered interrogation would have all been reactions within the spectrum of John Watson’s reactions. Instead he rose to his full height, modest though it may be, and held out a closed fist expectantly. 

Not that Sherlock was unfamiliar with the gesture, it had just never been offered to him before. But responded in kind, smirking slightly as he bumped his knuckles against John’s. 

“Nice, mate.” John answered approvingly, slapping Sherlock’s back.   


Sherlock shook his head, murmuring something about John being “juvenile” but grinned in spite of himself.


	3. Short Skirt/Long Jacket

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This little Sherlolly Swaplock drabble is a gift for @one-amber-owl   
>  The title was inspired by the Cake song of the same name. Hope you like it, sweets. Thanks for your help! 

He’d found her intimidating. Malachi Hooper wasn’t the type of man who had trouble admitting that. 

He was in good company too. Any man (any one really) who claimed to not find themselves dwarfed by Cherloc Holmes’ incomparable intellect and unapproachable beauty was a liar. 

She had a way of walking in her made to measure clothes, clacking down the corridors of Barts in her patent leather ankle boots. Crowds unconsciously parted to make way for her. Covetous eyes following as she passed. 

He often wondered how it could be possible that this woman, equal parts comic book heroine and complete personal mess, came to choose him.   
But she had. 

The ring he’d given her was modest but she wore it proudly, brandishing it with zero subtlety every time another indicated interest. 

“You, Dr. Hooper, are excessively useful.” She announced before dropping a kiss to his bearded jaw. 

He smirked. “I love you too.”


	4. Cotton Pearls

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gift of the Magi, Sherlolly style? I started to write this a while ago for my second blogaversary but I lost it in a c&p disaster. Please enjoy.

He passed it over the table after dinner. The ornately wrapped rectangle immediately took precedent over her pudding, which was carelessly pushed aside as Molly greedily reached for the proffered gift. 

Solid. Heavy. She didn't have to be Sherlock Holmes to say that this was a book. Still, she took her time unwrapping it, ignoring the man's impatient bobbing in her periphery. Carefully, she peeled back each corner, finding the center-line and breaking the seal to carefully. 

Sherlock huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose and muttered something about giving wrapped gifts to people who do postmortems. 

She gasped, lifting the tome from the paper. Her hand caressed the ornately bound book, "Die Hochzeit des Figaro" illustrated by famed German paper-cut artist Lotte Reiniger.

How did he know?

As a child, Molly had been fascinated with her work. Morbid though it may be, it was Lotte Reiniger's keen ability to tell a story through fine cuts and clean lines that had been inspirational in Molly's own work.

"Happy Paper." He announced. 

She looked up with a watery smile to find him standing upright, his strad propped under his chin. He gestured for her to open the book, and as she skimmed each page, he played. He played allegros in sweeping legato and arpeggios in pizzicato precision through each scene of the opera, so masterfully illustrated within the book.

She applauded when he finished, took hold of his face when he bent at the waist to bow, and properly snogged the life out of him.

"Happy Paper." She murmured, echoing his earlier felicitation.  

It was her turn to present Sherlock with his anniversary gift but she felt... anxious. There was no possible way what she held in this envelope could even come close to the gift Sherlock had just given her. It was embarrassing.

Gulping down nerves, and the very last of her pride, she reached beneath the seat to pull a manila envelope from her bag. Offering it to him with nary a glance in his direction, eyes lowered, cheeks burning. 

She heard him open it, the slide of the papers leaving the envelope. She knew it would take him less than a second to see it was her most recently published paper, and the notes wherein she cited and credited his work in her findings. 

He was silent another moment before Molly thought to redirect the potentially uncomfortable turn this could take by self-deprecating. "You win!" She huffed out with a nervous laugh, braving to look up at him. 

He smiled, setting the paper aside, looking directly at her with an unreadable expression. "Yes. I do."

 

***

 

Molly often replayed that moment in her head, the moment she'd gotten her arse completely beaten by Sherlock Holmes in the gift-giving department. It should not have come as such a surprise that a man capable of so much thought, was also capable of so much thoughtfulness.

Credit where credit was due, he was quite gracious in victory, that was a bit unexpected. He'd never been so withholding with his self-congratulating. He didn't mention it beyond the initial 'Yes. I do.' acknowledging his win. 

Molly was not so gracious in the face of her own defeat. No. 

She'd had a year to strategize and prepare. It had taken her months, several online purchases, and quite a bit of clandestine activity at the lab. This year she was confident she had gotten Sherlock a gift that would knock his fussily indexed cashmere socks off. 

All she had to do was bide her time until the perfect moment. He would be on his second glass of red, halfway through the homemade chocolate souffle, which Molly was not too humble to describe as near-orgasmic. It was her best dish, and she liked to wheel it out whenever circumstances required he be open to persuasion.

They kissed and toasted to another year of nuptial success and another year closer to winning Mycroft's bet that they wouldn't last longer than 4 years and 8 months. Easy money, they both agreed. 

The moment had come, Sherlock was deep in his cups while Molly prepared to pull the heavy black binder from under her chair. Before it was even fully in her grasp, he was waving a wide velvet box in her face. The size of it meant it could only be a necklace. 

Sighing in slight disappointment, she rallied to return his gift with a loving smile. 

"Chose to forgo wrapping. Given your frustrating penchant for opening gifts like a chest cavity." he quipped, setting his glass down. 

"Oh, Sherlock!" She breathlessly enthused, prising the box open to find a five-strand art deco pearl necklace, held together with a large glittering clamshell shaped clasp.

She lifted the necklace from the box, expecting it to be far heavier, surprise clearly showing on her face. 

"Happy Cotton." 

"Cotton?" Though they had given gifts in keeping with the traditional categories, she'd just assumed based on this year's offering, he'd chosen to forgo it. 

This is when he huffed out a breath in... was that anxiety? "Cotton pearls." He answered as if confessing something shameful. "I know it's reaching a bit with the theme, and it's just costume jewelry but I saw it and it made me think of you." He rushed to explain, shaking his head and adding, "Well you as... I don't know some sort of flapper... mermaid?"

Molly gave him the most amusedly confused look at that pronouncement. "Flapper Mermaid?" She questioned, gesturing for him to help her put it on. In a flash, he was behind her draping the necklace over her decolletage. She helped by tilting her head to the side and pulling her long hair out of the way.

"Yes." He murmured in her hair. "Too liberated for all that clamshell bra business." He kissed the exposed length of her neck when he completed his task of securing the clasps that were meant to be worn to the side, rather than behind. The necklaced draped long down her chest.

"This is a strangely specific fantasy." She cooed, letting herself be pulled under by wet, breath-stealing kisses.

"No. Nope. Bad Hooper." He chastised. "Where is my gift? Or wait... is this one of those times where a partner's forgetting of a gift can be leveraged for especially kinky sex? No, that can't be it, you were reaching for something under the chair. You got me a gift but you don't want to give it to me. Why?"

Naturally, asshole genius can't let her get a word out on her own. Deep breaths. 

"It's just embarrassing." She reached beneath the seat to present the thick black binder. "Yours is always better than mine. And I've tried. I swear I'm trying. Mine just don't come close."

The binder was a manuscript, accompanying several sheets containing carefully indexed slides held in plastic-coated sleeves. 

"The Varying Tensile Strengths of Natural Fibers: An Annotated Guide to Fabric Identification" Written by, none-other than Sherlock Holmes. 

He looked at her, speechless and baffled, near sputtering. "How? When?"

"I took everything you'd written on the subject from your website, polished it up a bit and edited out some of your more... impassioned ramblings. After that it was just a matter of acquiring the necessary samples and mounting the slides. I've already spoken to a publishing house, and there's interest-"

She was cut off with a hard kiss. "You're too good at this." He said accusingly. "I always win."

Molly's brows knit together. "What? How am I too good at this if you always win?" She pushed away from him to look him in the eyes. 

"Easy. That's _why_ I win. Because you're so much better at this than me. I always get the better gift." He explained slowly, surprised by Molly's apparent slowness of uptake.

"No, Sherlock. The person who _gives_ the best gift is the one who wins." She explained. 

He shook his head. "That doesn't make any sense. Besides, last year you said I won. So clearly... oh... Really?"

She bit her lip. He honestly didn't know that he'd basically swept her ass over teacups with that stupid book?

"I gave you a book and played violin at you, Molly." He said incredulously. "There's no way that tops being credited in your paper. You put my name beside yours on something you accomplished that's... well... that's..." He coughed to disguise a show of emotion. "I still can't believe you put your name beside mine on our marriage certificate so... you know? And now this."

He gestured toward the manuscript. 

"And I gave you a necklace that goes with absolutely nothing in your wardrobe..."

"Then I already have the perfect thing." She answered saucily, flashing her large brown eyes up at him.

So there you have it. She could have wrapped it all up with some soppy diatribe about how the true gift is love etc etc...

Instead she kissed him, kissed him and kissed him again. Then, shaking the strands of pearls at him she said "We doing this or what?" before reaching behind her to bring the zip of her dress down.

"You did say this goes with nothing in my wardrobe."

 

 

 


	5. Reorientation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This was my submission for Sherlolly Smutember in the Pride category.

No matter how gently he touched her, his hands were not a woman’s hands. No matter how thoroughly he tasted her skin, making her sweat and shudder, his mouth was not a woman’s mouth. His mind did not house a woman’s thoughts. His soul did not carry a woman’s empathy.

It’s something that made him feel slightly… inadequate, if he was honest.

Sherlock had a strong sense of superiority, but never over women. Women in general, seemed to dwell  in some mystic realm beyond his reach. He could never take one apart quite so thoroughly as he could a man, there was always some left over. Always something he misses.

He sees the smolder in Harry’s eyes when she and Molly meet. He thinks he sees her smolder back at her there was something there. Something between them he’d seen before. Molly was blushing for Harry the way she blushes for him.

 Molly is bisexual. That was a little factoid he’d tucked away somewhere, it had somehow gotten lost in the shuffle. The “Molly” section of his mind palace had shifted and grown so rapidly over the years, there was a clutter of notes he hadn’t gotten around to organizing. The only things he’d taken a mind to carefully collate were details about her in relationship to him.

That thought made him sick with himself.  Molly is an entire person without him, and without him may very well be how she one day chooses to go on in her life. Sherlock was keenly aware of his many, many failings as an individual. But for the most part, he felt he made up for it with his intelligence and the good he’s tried to do.

He was certainly better than most other men. He didn’t view women as objects, sexual or otherwise. He was nice to animals, he lets people pass him when he drives, and he’s never verbally abused a waiter. He considered himself a few notches above merely ‘basically decent’.

But none of that mattered. Not really in comparison to most women, who in general, were more decent to others in one day than he’d been in his entire life. Harry is a drinker and a divorcee, but those failings didn’t seem to matter stacked against his own.

Molly is sitting alone with Harry, Sherlock watches them sipping his scotch from the Watson’s kitchen. The dinner portion of the gathering had ended and people had broken off into clumps of conversation while pop music filtered through the speakers.

Harry’s said something that sets Molly laughing. She braces her hand against the blonde woman’s shoulder as if whatever she’d said was hilarious enough to physically push her backward. He says nothing, looming darkly in the corner utterly refusing to examine his frustration in this moment.

The night ended with everyone hugging at the doorway as people donned their coats and sundries, some carrying plates of leftovers upon Mary’s insistence. Before they departed, Harry made a very obvious show of giving Molly her card, assuring her she was available anytime. Molly blushed again, thanking her before turning to the door with Sherlock at her shoulder.

The back of the cab was uncomfortably silent. Well, uncomfortable for him, Molly didn’t seem the least bit phased by the tension he found so very palpable. There was nothing for it but to try and breach the topic diplomatically.

“You and Harriet Watson seemed to get on.” He noted, but his tone was flat and a touch biting.

“Yeah, she’s brilliant!” Molly replied with a soft smile. “I never knew investment banking was so interesting.”

It’s not. And just what did that have to do with anything anyway? Ah right, Harry was someone important in the financial sector, he recalled.

“She gave you her number.”

“She gave me her card.” Molly corrected. “She’s going to give me stock advice.”

Sherlock scoffed. “That’s not what she wants to give you.” He winced as he said it. Even as it was leaving his mouth he knew it was the wrong thing. Molly froze beside him, her easy demeanor dropping as her face took on that pinched expression she wears when she’s upset; when he’s upset her.

She was agog, completely baffled. When she did look at him he saw such disappointment in her eyes it was like a knife twisting in his gut.

“Molly, I’m sorry, that was… I mean…” He sighed heavily, digging deep to ask the question he’d really wanted to ask. “Did you want her?”

“What?”

“It’s a simple question, Molly. It’s obvious you two were getting on quite well I was rather surprised you left with me at all. I know you could go either way, and an alcoholic investment banker is a trade up from a junkie detective, I suppose.”

She was silent for a long moment, her lips drawn together in a thin line, arms crossed protectively around her shoulders. “You know, of all the people I’ve been with, Sherlock. You were the last person I thought would ever do this to me.”

He didn’t understand what she meant by that.

“Why would you do that? Why would you throw my sexuality in my face that way? I would never do that to you.” She reasoned with her voice soft from the pain she felt. The pain he’d given her.

“Oh no?” He snapped. “And the ‘lots of sex’ comment when you were with meat dagger wasn’t a jab at mine?”

Molly shook her head in confusion. “What?”

He paused, letting out a long controlled breath. “You know sexual attraction is not something I experience as often, or even in the same way as other people. I’ve felt it for others so infrequently I’d rarely had much of an opportunity to consider my own sexuality. There never seemed to be a pattern to whom it was that drew my uncommon and fleeting interest. You are the only person who has even been capable of capturing it for a sustained amount of time.”

He felt her hand on his knee, she was squeezing gently, centering him. Showing him she was listening while also not looking at him in the eyes.

“You are capable of loving more, of wanting more. More than what I am. And you deserve it. I just don’t think I’ll be ready for it when you leave me.” He confessed quietly.

She sniffled quietly after he’d said his peace, small hand tightening on his knee without letting go. She said nothing for the remainder of the cab ride, walking ahead of him into his flat while he paid the driver.

When he walked the steps to 221b to join her on the sofa where she sat with her knees to her chest, arms wrapped around them. She looked up at him as he passed by.

“What you said.” She pronounced, shattering the stillness of the room. “How you felt about my attraction to others… I feel the same way about your work. I feel like I can never be enough for you, that the work will always matter more. I fear that one day you’ll decide I’ve gotten in your way and you’ll leave me…”

His mouth dropped open at this confession. It baffled him, how could she think that?

“I’ve never been with someone, especially a man, who had a ‘take it or leave it’ attitude toward sex.  I feel so… inadequate. I don’t understand what I am bringing to this relationship if sex isn’t that important to it.”

He was beside her now, pulling her gently into his arms. “Sex is important to our relationship.” He insisted. “I can take or leave sex in general, yes. But I have developed a need to share physical intimacy with you, Molly. Does that not count for something?”

She molded herself against him, pressing her lips to his jaw, his cheek, the orbital bone beneath his saturnine eyes. “And I could potentially have enjoyable sex with different men and women, but I choose you. I want you. Doesn’t that count for something?”

“No.” He answered, pulling her into his lap and kissing her soundly. “It’s everything.”

They didn’t bother to remove one another’s clothes, when the kisses turned into frantic pawing hands and lapping tongues. Clothes were simply shoved aside hastily. His trousers pushed down his legs, her skirt thrown over her waist.

He had one hand beneath her blouse, massaging her tender little mounds of flesh while the other dove between her thighs to shove her knickers aside.

God she was already so wet. He supposed it was alright if her flirtation with Harry Watson is what got her halfway there, when it was him reaping the rewards. He found he rather liked the notion, his cock twitching and reddening into full hardness at the sound of her breathy mewls.

She moaned as she filled herself with his length, she always did. As if she’d forgotten what it felt like to be joined with him and she was happy to be reminded.

“How could you think I would ever not want this?” She murmured in heated pants against his neck, quickening her pace as he puts his hands round her hips to steady her as her movements become more desperate. In that moment he wasn’t sure. He wasn’t even sure why there had ever been a time he believed he wouldn’t.

“I-I don’t know.” He confessed pistoning his own hips to meet her thrusts with his own. It wasn’t that she was a woman or had a pleasing form. She is. She does. Those were facts but those facts did not dictate his desire for her.

He’s quite certain he would want to see her face as she met her release, be the one getting her there, regardless of the body she happened to occupy or the gender she happened to present.  And he was fairly certain that she felt the same for him. There was an odd sort of comfort in that knowledge.

She shook over him, trembling with her climax, her hold on him tightening, guiding him to the end with her. They shared kiss after kiss. The body was transport, only transport. But it was a useful tool for expressing the unquantifiable equation of their two beings’ connection that was of the body, and also not.


End file.
